maelstrom
by chaos-music
Summary: The kindest tyrant ruled with the bloodiest fist. ;; maelstrom,  n. : a situation marked by turbulence, strong feelings, violence, or destruction. -Ashura-ou, Celes, no pairings-
1. so sweet, the music of death

Author's Note: Remix of my twoshot series "v o i c e s". I was rereading Tsubasa and checking out their TVTropes page and I found out that I sorta left out an important part of Ashura's insanity. Thus, I raged at myself, set to work, and wrote and rewrote my arse off. At one in the morning. This is the result of my deranged Ashura-rampage: _mAelSTROM. _

_Please review and tell me what you thought. Flames accepted. :)_

_Warning: I was confusing myself while writing this. So, if I tend to repeat things, deviate from YOUR deconstruction of Ashura's mindset, or have screwed up altogether, I'm terribly sorry. _

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**Ashura-ou and Fai(Yui) D. Fluorite are the property of CLAMP and possibly multiple fangirls. :)**

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_-[One]-_

His first words to the mirror every morning are _I am truly a despicable monster. _

Ashura-ou smoothes black tresses into the odd diadem he wears, adjusts his face into a calm and gentle smile, and fixes his robes just so. It's an almost-religious ritual; he must be at his very best whenever he goes to meet what will soon become his greatest sin.

Sometimes the trust he sees in that child's blue eyes breaks him, even farther down than he has already gone. The benevolent wizardking tries to make up for this and puts the child on a crystal throne next to his. Together they oversee a frozen wonderland of magic and bloodshed.

The wizardking cannot blindfold the child, but it's not for lack of trying.

The child is swathed in a heavy shroud of black-blue curses and shimmering with bright violet power, unsurpassable, perhaps the greatest wizard this realm has never known. He carries a world in small white hands and too many years in clouded blue eyes. The child hasn't smiled yet, but unlike many other things, Ashura hasn't given up on _that_.

The day begins with a simple greeting, a forced politeness on the king's part and a scared, wild silence on the child's. There is an unneeded array of the land's culinary finest, and Ashura fills his senses with illusions of rotting bread that some of the peasants force down. He glances at the child picking at his food uneasily and tries not to imagine an identical corpse.

"Well then, let's practice our glyphs, shall we?"

The child sits with a gray slab of concrete that almost seems to flicker in and out of sight balanced in front of him, painstakingly copying the etched lines on stone onto parchment. Ashura shifts his gaze from the adorable image presented to him to the bloodstained castles burning and crumbling into dust painted inside his eyelids. The voices that scream _Save the child! Your demons will kill him!_ have been trying to give him incentive lately.

Incentive. How cruel they are.

The time for the enchantment hiding behind his fingertips to emerge tiptoes closer, loud, echoing footsteps that only he can hear. Carefully timed, a precise measure: one, two, three, four, five seconds to the deconstruction of his world and his country. He can hear his heartbeat falling within its rhythm, he can hear Fai(Yui)'s steps following in its path.

He presses his fingers into sharp fists, drawing blood. Better his blood than the blood of some innocent. It's a consolation that he knows his blood will be on good hands.


	2. following strict rhythm

_There's a recurring theme here. :) _

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_[-Two-]_

He can feel the carefully constructed palace of his dreams tremble under his feet, shuddering with every step he takes. When he walks these crystal halls in the presence of his own (wonderfully, horribly deteriorating) mind, he can find that some rooms have been soaked in blood.

Ashura watches as Fai(Yui) unlocks the sleeping bird inside himself, a glorious beast of rushing magic and power. The bird takes flight, spreading warm wings inside the boy's heart, soaring out of that tiny ribcage and casting spells over all of the country. The child does not want this creature—it is a mockingbird, calling out his twin's name and his twin's demise. And yet he must tame it and ride on its wings.

How ironic, really.

Ashura despises it, how the child loves the land and loves him, but cannot love himself. He knows that every day the child sees his twin's face in the mirror and wants to shatter the glass into a million pieces. His face is a curse; his admirable, innocent face is a _curse. _

And yet—

The child is _wonderful,_ Ashura feels. He is a wizarding prodigy and a beautifully broken soul. Such a perfect carrier for the bloodshed he will paint onto him. It is only after the first region dead, the first massacred household that he realises all the gaping holes in his spider's web, but he himself has become too entangled to stop. He teaches himself to ignore them, skirt around the edges so that he doesn't fall in until he absolutely must.

"_Your Majesty—is that blood?" _

.o.

He watches the scene torn out of a yellowed, blood-splattered parchment scroll unroll at his feet. He watches as the silent, smiling wizardking steps into the village, watches the populace roar their approval for their beloved monarch, and watches as the king's mouth moves, dripping poison, and the crowds fall silent.

He has commanded them, a sadistic, impossible command that even _he_ is sickened by. But they must, for he is their kind wizardking and this is the only path to the unhappy ending his wishes have written for himself.

"And your king commands his people to drown themselves in blood."

The villian never gets a happy ending, does he?

But it does not matter: these atrocities are meant for _Fai_(Yui), for Fai's safety, for Fai's peace of mind, for Fai's future.

And when they begin to scream, and scream, and _scream, _his ears break in protest and his control snaps and he just wants them to _be quiet, _because they do not understand the importance of what he must doand his hands move and his hands are _red_ and the skies are red and it is all so blissfully unreal. These are not his hands, not his acts, not his sword, not his eyes, and the laughter that stains the air is most definitely _not his._

_I am truly a despicable monster._


	3. the swell of the measures

This is the most easily recognizable chapter: it's an edited version of And The Castle Crumbles, otherwise known as Original Chapter Two of v o i c e s.

Please, once again, review! 8D

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_[-Three-]_

The mirror is but another enemy. Trapped inside it is someone warped and backwards, because the person in it with long black tresses and soft eyes is _not him._

No, that hypocrite on the other side, smiling calmly with glassy eyes, is enslaved to the wants and cares of a fickle court. He, the true wizardking, listens to no one and no thing but his advisors, whispering, wise friends that guide him.

Although some part of him wonders where they came from, and why they seem so _heartless._

Ashura is never one for subtlety, at least in his own private bedchamber. He's walled in by ice and his cords are drawn in so tight that he's breaking, feather thin cracks splitting his eyes. But no. He controls himself now, for this act and this curse is _all for Fai(Yui)'s sake. _

No-one can know, for none can understand the depths of his suffering. He does not want to become the beast that feeds his power, does not _want_ to build up a pedestal for himself of broken bones and bodies, but he _must_ surpass the magic the boy holds. He is breaking a child's curse, why can't they see that? This is important.

The not-him on the other side of the mirror croaks out: _I am a truly despicable monster._

"No. No, I'm not."

.o.

Sometimes it's like a game. They challenge him, set him goals, and he has to beat their expectations. He runs to stay ahead of the demons clawing their bloody paths behind him, and sometimes he can toss his head back and laugh.

Soon there are corpses piled in the dusty closets of his mind, shadows of the souls they used to have and the bodies they used to be. Oh, he disposed of the corporeal ones, of course. It wouldn't do to just have them lying around- _(out of sight, out of mind, he does not need more weights on his broken glass castle of a consciousness)-b_ut his voices taunt him, remind him of everyone in his list of bloody black sins.

And every day he must rearrange himself and tell the voices to hush so that he may meet the child of sin he loves the most.

Sometimes he finds himself sickened at the sight of red on his hands; so out of place in this sparkling silver world. The smoke of death clogs his throat until he finds himself bent over with a hacking cough, almost as if he is trying to expel something parasitical and wicked. The physicians don't know what to do with him.

He imagines them coughing up their own hearts.

.

.The corpse heap in his mind grows until he can feel their dead hands hammering at the walls of his mind, threatening to break free. They're a battering ram of carcasses, raking nails down his skull, screaming in his ears, a swirling roar of high pitched moans enough to shatter any man's sanity.

Wait-

Is it

_his_ blood dripping silently down the bone-white fingers? He unclenches his warm, red right hand and stares.

Somewhere in the blood-soaked castle of his soul, a demon laughs.


	4. falls back into quiet

_[-Four-]_

The walls of this room are bare, black, scubbed clean of the blood soaking its neighbours. The only light comes from the reflection of the silver castle's faerie wings and the moon glancing off the glass shards of his mind that litter the floor.

This is his private Chamber, where he and his advisers congregate, where he plans his next steps under their watchful eyes. This is the noisiest room in the caverns of his dreams, and yet the room where his thoughts are the clearest, the easiest to understand.

Here, the red on his hands never seem to wash away.

Seven pairs of glassy eyes watch the wizardking pace back and forth, seven heads mounted on crystal-white staffs regard their king with benign satisfaction. Their images are carved in red on the inside of his eyelids, and rightly so—for it is he who gave the images in the first place. Ashura has kindly dressed the voices that whisper to him in a sort of corporeal form, at least within the walls of his mind's shattered castle. It's for his own peace of spirit as theirs.

Each broken eye seems to cry tears of blood, each mouth contorted into a twisted laugh. Ashura finds it terribly endearing.

Here, there are no mirrors.

.o.

It's quite a pity that he is alone again when he wakes up.

Ashura stares again at his _(now)_ clean, white hands and blinks, focusing. He's fooled the court into thinking that they are his master, fooled the country into believing that he is their king and only that. Fooled the physicians that wonder about his hacking cough. Fooled Fai into believing that he, Ashura-ou, is his gentle and perfect liegelord.

He is quite the perfect actor. Quite the perfect _hypocrite._

Ashura holds the thoughts of all of Celes in the palms of his red-white-bloody-clean hands, and he twitches their puppet's strings with carefully plotted abandon. What they see is far from the truth, and anyone who can tell otherwise is dead, nothing but a rotting corpse kept under the snow.

How many has he slaughtered now?

How many skeletons does he hide in dusty, cobwebbed closets?

The pale hands tighten into fists once more, resisting the urge to claw out some innocent's throat. His heart scrapes the bottom of a graveyard of rusted nails.

He was not lying when he told the child that his smile healed his heart; Fai is who saves him, for Ashura has proved that he is _not _overrun by darkness in taking Fai's hand and leading him to Celes. He loves the child, he really does—

_Enough to break him and drown him in the black abyss that buries itself under snow and ice and smiles. _

The arguments that usually work, that this is for the good of his country-that this is the only way that the monster ravaging Celes will be tamed and killed, fall on deaf ears. Ashura stares at the ornate ceiling of his bedchamber and sees nothing but the grotesque faces of his advisers, stolen from the carcasses strewn here and there in his mind.

He does not even need the twisted parody of him in the mirror to say it: _I am truly a despicable monster._

He can't bring himself to counter it, and his voices lie dormant, waiting, under the surface. No-one comes to his rescue as he breaks down in tears.

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My beloved pet project. Like a good little cat, waiting to be fed.

So feed it I will.

xXx

So, Ashura's fighting his insanity. Good luck with that, Your Majesty.

...Please review~! :)


	5. but never too silent too long

I noticed that chapter 4 got a bit choppy towards the end. Ashura's supposed to have graceful, consuming insanity...so, ah well. I hope this chapter's better.

_mAelSTROM: Ashura's Insanity. **With added Nightmare Fuel! **_

Since everything your mind gives you is a twisted little Christmas gift when you have a fever.

I was listening to The Birthday Massacre's _Looking Glass _while writing.

Also, ponder these words from Straylight Run's _Existentialism on Prom Night- _**_"_You would kill for this, just a little bit. Just a little bit. You would, you would._" _**

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_[-Five-]_

Whispers run with winged feet through the crystal court, blowing like cold drafts in the cracks of chamber walls and whistling through people's ears. _The King is ill, _they say._ His Majesty is ill. _No noble is exempt from the crippling anxiety that besets the kingdom, for who can rule the country when the King has no heir?

_Oh yes, the King _is_ ill_, Ashura thinks as he rolls over in bed, muffling his delusional mumbling with the bedsheets. The King is very, very ill, plagued by visions of broken bodies and clouded eyeballs and blood clogging the drainways, gluing his pale fingers together. His advisors have even urged him to use the meat from the carcasses he keeps to himself in the closet to feed the starving. Selfish, they call him. Horribly selfish. Keeping sustenance from his country like that—

The thought of tearing off chunks of a human body for food (_all that red, thick red, splattering the snow and coating his mouth, his hands, his eyes)_ makes him sick. Ashura bites down on his lip and resists the _utopian_ images the voices are feeding him in place of medicine. He may be a murderer and a hypocrite, but he is still above the silvery wolves that walk the outskirts of Celes, merciless, never distinguishing from human to squirrel, only caring that their clan and themselves do not grow hungry.

Or is he?

Ashura brushes these doubts away. Yes, yes of course he is. He is more than just a limbed beast, he has a mind. A soul. A heart—

Voices cackle, loud, biting: _Oh, but your heart belongs to us, for we've eaten it. We've spit out the twisted remains on your soul and let the corpses claw at your mind. And you're left dragging your fingernails through the mangled mass of open bodies, looking for just a little bit of goodness left in you, just a little bit. And you find _nothing_._

Ashura turns his face to the ceiling, staring blankly at the seven leering faces engraved on the white marble. He searches for words in his stopped throat, cannot find them. He cannot breathe.

Blood drips on his face from the marble expanse above him and soon the whole world is drowned in red.

.o.

There are too much whispers_voices_**visions** pressing up on him like a spider that doesn't know where to put its legs. It crawls up on him, hairy and gentle, leaving sharp crimson cuts on his pale skin. He's not sure if it really tried to force itself down his throat, or if anyone swatted it away.

The cuts don't bleed, instead, they itch from the inside, as if a hundred black fingers are etching out their names on his skin, with his blood. Something in his mind tells him not to scratch. His voices are nowhere now, or perhaps everywhere. Maybe theirs is the laughter echoing off the walls, driving itself like rusty nails into his head.

Ashura tries to take breaths, tries to reach out for something cold and real, but there are white arms holding his down, their owners' saliva dripping on his face. He stares into the bleeding red holes where its eyes should have been, and sees something unidentifiable and terrible as bits of dying flesh fall out of the eye sockets and onto his cheek, mingling with drool.

_This is the truest reflection of your own mind, Your Majesty!_ He hears Them, resounding in his head. _A good representation, yes? We are the best painters, after all—_

They blur, fade into each other, overlap, and echo.

Its breath is horrible, the stench of rotten carcasses left in the rain. A spider crawls into its mouth and it shrieks, twisting backwards as it spits the hairy thing out of its jaws and the world is painted over in black.

.

.He wakes up to blue, not red.

Good, good, not red, not black, but soft baby blue.

The child's eyes are worried and his small mouth is turned into a slight frown, blonde wisps of hair falling onto his forehead. His voice is a whisper, too, but one sweeter than the hooked barbs his advisors have latched onto him.

"Y-Your Majesty? Are you alright?"

Ashura lets out a breath and turns his head. Something remarkably like fear is holding fast to his chest "Fai? Can you do me a favour?"

The child's eyes widen, staring. "Of course, Your Majesty! Anything—"

"Smile for me. Please."

The child's face is much more like a soft snowfall right after the rain than the sun breaking through clouds. Ashura finds himself willing to erase anything remotely red from the world.

He manages a small smile himself. Someday Fai will understand his next, choked words: _I am truly a despicable monster. _


	6. let the discordant melody take you

_[-Six-]_

They have been quiet lately.

Ashura is doing paperwork in his diamond-sapphire study _(oh the mundane, the rudimentary, the ritualistic runes that flow from his quill – even _this_ mind-numbing task is laid upon the king's rounded shoulders)_ when he notices that They are not telling him what to sign, what to negotiate, what to cast aside. They are not picking out names of villages, of people, of cities and events where the beast can find a new meal. They are not feeding him appetisers and whipping treats away just as he gets close.

There are no voices. Only wind blowing through his mind's cracked castle doors and thick red water _(yes, water, _**only** **water**_) _dripping soundlessly onto sleeping countrymen on the floor.

The quill drops from his hand, erratic ink paths carving themselves across the parchment.

He tests himself, whispering secrets into the caverns of his own mind. Nothing echoes back, not even broken mirror sounds of his own voice. Silence. Blessed silence

He is _free._

There is a whirlwind of heavy, embroided robes and long black hair that rushes out the door and down the white marble hallways and through the main chamber and the chiseled blue runes on the floor. His feet trip and stumble all the way to his Council room, where all his staff meet when they don't think he's looking and where the Wizard's Guild stays and lets dusty magic gather on their fingertips.

He knows what they think of him, a fool and a puppet. They sit there plotting his death. _(In _that,_ at least, he is three steps ahead of them.)_

It is because of this that he allows himself to take leave of courtesy for a while and rudely interrupt their deliberations. He catches them by surprise as he thrusts open the doors, uninvited, unnanounced, and radiant.

Their voices are rusty, dug out from the backs of their throats: "Y-your Majesty? What are you—"

"Do not presume to question me," he says, reveling in words that are _his own_, not slipped behind his tongue and ready to roll off it.

They sink into bows, knee-deep in their own filth. "Is there anything Your Majesty wishes?"

Ashura is fully aware of the fact that he is beaming, his arms braced on either side of the double doors painted with golden inscription that guard this shattered sanctuary. "Prepare a feast."

Their eyes blink at him, look through him. "Pardon me?"

Their wizardking laughs. "A feast? Yes, a feast! It's just the thing to liven one's spirits after—" he gestures with one hand _(for a second it flashes red and dripping, but he can't be sure)_ "—these latest attacks."

The Council and staff scramble to their feet, murmuring assent and calculating costs for the kitchens. Ashura has spent enough time at the papers to rest assured that he will not be taxing his country in any way with this.

He has already given Celes too much to worry about.

.o.

He has to hand it to his kitchen; the feast is done with in two days. Those chefs are spectacular.

This is no mean feat, spells and incantations woven into the spices tossed in. This feast is special, meant to celebrate. Ashura is already celebrating that he can even plan this feast with his own mind, uninterrupted by visions of rotting flesh and by snake's voices in his brain. This feast has at least thirty-seven dishes per course and a three-tiered cake in the shape of his castle for desert, wings frosted out of sugar. And all, rich, poor, or mourning _(who isn't nowadays?) _is invited to attend.

All the country is hailing the kindness of their beloved wizardking, bt the Wizard's Council sits grumbling. What his Council cannot see is that finding the morale to march on his half the battle.

.o.

Ashura is staring at the mirror, memorising his features, making sure that this is still really him. Fai is not the only one in this castle who practices how to smile.

The echoes in his mind's castle sound damp, as if the walls themselves are rotting, crumbling into ashes around the corpses on the floor. The red water mingles with the grey dust on the floor, painting his feet as he walks through this castle, and everything sounds horribly loud, as if to fill this newfound silence.

One sentence repeats more than others, the static behind the words buzzing into the space behind his eyes, replaying itself from past records of his thoughts. _I am truly a despicable monster. _

This sentence is a lie.

Echoes reverbrate through his skull, jarring his thoughts out of place. He leans his forehead against the cool mirror _(tangible, real, whole)._

If he misses Them, does that make him deranged?

.o.

He stands to the side, watching his guests mingle and laugh, pretending that they have no fears and that nothing is killing their children. Each voice, slurring with drink and heavy with meat, collides above his head, swirling as if in dance.

This is the feast they spent three days preparing for, a record for his castle.

Ashura's hands are shaking and he knows why. He tries to draw in deep breaths but twisted black hands are reaching through his throat, strangling him from the inside. His face is a smooth blank, his heart struggling, slamming into the walls of its ribcage prison. _(As if some monster with strong red hands is trying to escape.)_

He knows what this is. This is Them, deciding that _no_, he cannot have just one day as Ashura and not as the beast. This is Them slipping a little bit of power into his hands only to take it away. This is Them, wearing down at the castle walls in his mind, ramming at them with the force of ten thousand corpses. This is Them, hissing commands in his ear that he cannot help but follow because _this is for his country and for Fai and how can the world not see this why are they so afraid. _

This is him, finding it too hard to stand on his own and letting them drag him around. His heartbeat slows _(like a beast, newly freed, prowling the countryside and ready to murder the hunters that locked him up). _

Ashura is not here, he repeats over and over in his head. The wine glass in his hand shatters against the floor. Nobody notices, the sound lost in the chaos of their idle chatter. Ashura is not here.

(The hand that picks up the jagged stem of the glass and weilds it like a rapier, poised to kill – whose is it?)

Ashura is not here.

His first sacrifice is a woman, blonde hair long. She's wearing a black and white dress. Maybe the ghost fogging her eyes is that of her husband. Maybe a child. Maybe both. It does not matter, for he will put her out of her misery now. She opens her mouth to scream and the glass is shoved down her throat, scratching at her insides. And then her eyes. And her stomach and soon he is tangling his fingers in her hair and pulling while her eyes weep blood and her neck stretches, skin taut and red, her shrieks drowning in a sea of blood gushing through until

it snaps off, thin threads of flesh and pulsing pink muscle waving in the silent air. The golden head dangles limply in his fingers, mouth still open.

He drops it and steps over her body, the black and red dress spreading over the cracked floor inscribed with violet runes. The guests watch him like one would watch a rabid wolf, eyes darting to and fro with fear.

They can't see him. Ashura is not here.

A sigh. Now _this_, this is troublesome. Everyone present must be massacred, if only for convenience. He can at least be thankful that not all of Celes arrived. In fact, most of these are just expendable nobilitites that were plotting their way onto his throne anyway.

But it would take too long for him to have fun with them, like he did the girl _(what was her name? Duchess Virgil?)_. He raises his hand and smiles.

_(Goodnight to your country, dear wizardking, and may it prosper-)_

HisTheir tongue moves, calling forth black arts. He is but a paintbrush meant to cause pain.

HisTheir hand opens, fingers cradling a ball of electric energy.

HisTheir will shouts, pushing the magic out and casting it over the banquet hall, watching it widen its scope as it worms through their guests' heads, slipping in the cracks of their minds and poking needles through them. HeThey watch as their guests give in to their greatest nightmares and animalistic wants, the ones they hide in the dusty corners of their soul and try to forget about. These wants take shape, crawling forward and clawing at their souls for attention. A few fall to their knees and vomit. Their eyes roll into their heads, their hands shake, they are _just like him._

HeThey watch as their guests rise to the occasion (_after all, when else will they have a chance like this?)_, grip their weapons, and murder each other. Some go further, violating women and children with the lust of the flesh. Their last act of life is to take another's away.

_(It was a simple spell really, one that merely played with the mind and took away self-control and conscience.)_

Ashura is not here. He has turned on his heel and fled, laughing all the way to his bedchamber, where he locks himself in and falls into bed. His people's screams are his lullaby. And his voices are back, cackling with the stolen lips of carcasses.

He knows he will not sleep tonight.

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**Whoa. This is quite long for my usual standards...and especially compared to the first chapter of this fic. **

**I just realised, I effectively wiped out around 90% of Celes nobility. Expect a bit of Fai in the next chapter. And Ashura being even more determined that Fai kill him. **

**I also think this is the first time I've ever gotten to up to 6 chapters in a story. Sadly, I don't think this will last much longer, according to my timeline. (In around 2 chapters Fai leaves Celes. Where did the months go?)**

**In any case, enjoy, and please, please review~!**


	7. far away and over the edge

-[Seven]-

His first words to the mirror _this_ time are not the melancholic refrain that has been ringing through his mind. The castle has broken, buried under the weight of corpses, and standing in the midst of them is a carcass teetering forward, a grin stretching across its face as it falls on top of the pile and laughs, a horrible sound, and flesh like rotting apples, eyes like a black void—

-no. It's just the mirror.

Ashura stares at the not-him on the other not-side and rearranges his face into something resembling a calm, if not slightly worried, expression. He no longer notices the puppet strings _(thin and silver, flashing in the shadows)_ quivering in the air, twitching above his pale hands.

The not-Ashura spreads its palms against the glass, staring at him with angry/sad/broken/worried/mad eyes. It whispers against the surface, small mouth forming the accusation that stabbed at his defenses for the last few years _(has it really been that long?)._

_I am truly a despicable monster: _a damning truth that has been disproved again and again and again, or so his advisors tell him. His advisors have the world written inside his head in stone. The grand jury has made its final decision and he is _not guilty not guilty not guilty. _He did what he did for the sake of purging his country from the greatest evil it has ever encountered and for the sake of lifting a child's burden. There is _nothing wrong_ with what he did. Nothing. Wrong.

Ashura straightens his back, turns to leave, for he is a King and must deal with the mundane affairs of the world in his palm. He is one step from the door when (strings flash and) he whirls around, coming face to face with the not-him again.

The mantra begins again.

_I am truly a-_

He draws his sword and slashes at the glass, letting faerie-dust-sparkle shimmer in the air and land on him, letting the fragments of reflective jewel dance across the floor and spin to a stop (like falling snowflakes, like a blanket of white over bodies of red). Their sabre edges catch on the drapes and leave scratches on the floor until the white marble bleeds (it's warm) and their conflicting edges shriek in pain at contact. He smiles and there's no-one there to see it but the cobwebs on the ceiling, dripping black oil onto his hair and the pieces on the floor.

Ashura is not here.

Ashura never was.

.o.

He steps into the remains of the ballroom and dances around the dead. Cockroaches skitter over the lovely three-tiered cake and the meat are overrun with maggots - they are crawling out of diseased skin, fighting for air and for freedom and not to drown in blood. Ashura stops to let them run over his fingers before he flicks them away.

The maggots crawl out of the eye sockets, noses, ears. Ashura counts them as he watches them writhe across the floor. One, two, ten, one hundred. None of them have the voice to accuse him of mass murder.

.o.

The castle is quiet, deathly quiet. (The castle is _conquered_, overrun, eaten at. The king is dethroned. Demons cackle, letting the laughter fill the empty rooms.) Ashura settles himself upon his throne and waits.

He is not stupid. The papers left at his desk were a will, a decree, and the invitation for a dinner with Amaterasu, the reigning empress of a land beyond where it shone with sun rather than snow. He had politely declined.

It was a pity really, that the feast had to end in slaughter. He hadn't planned the horizons to crash together just then, but he knew he was on a collision course anyway and when (the puppet strings jerked) the voices came back, it wasn't like he could fight their will with his.

The decree read that Celes be evacuated. His will left everything to Fai.

Ashura is King of Nothing, King of Corpses, King of Death. There is quiet song in his head and strings of words carved in blood on his eyes. Today, an angel will strike at his heart and kill _him_, for there is no-one left for _Ashura_ to kill.

It takes forever for Fai's laight footsteps to run down the chamber.

.o.

_Yui's_ smile is as fake as Ashura has ever seen it, and they both stand there: master and pupil, king and subject, father and son. Around his feet there are corpses, and if they walked anywhere else there would be corpses, because Ashura is King of Death and his subjects are _corpses. _

Fai is a corpse. Yui is flesh and blood and ice and tears.

It had been quite a shock for the boy, yes, fleeing to the chamber with the full intent of killing the beast and being beset with Ashura, King of the Dead, and his subjects instead. But Yui is _Yui_ and Yui hasn't yet locked his smile on completely, for there is sweet, lovely fear in those sky blue eyes and his face is whiter than it's ever been as Yui drops to his knees.

"Well, Fai? Aren't you going to kill me?"

"I—"

"You promised, didn't you? To kill anything troubling Celes."

Yui looks like a corpse, but Ashura knows he isn't. (Or is he?) But Yui is enraged, betrayed, and he's screaming, _"Is that why you brought me here, then? So I could murder you when this happened?"_

Ashura only smiles. (_Get the child to kill YOU_, his advisors told him, and it was for the best, who was he to argue?)

Yui hesitates before he calls the magic to him (magic that Ashura can sense anywhere, anywhere in the world or even in other worlds because he _knows_ Yui) and swirls the incantation over Ashura's head, the runes chaining him down – and he doesn't fight, because he is a dirty beast and the King of Death must be as dead as his subjects.

Yui is also compassion, humanity, because he refuses to kill the tyrant king – for now, anyways. Ashura wishes himself sweet dreams because there is no one else here who would do so. The screams in his head have mingled with the refusal in Yui's eyes and they're both too loud, ramming itself like a stake into his mind, until his whole world runs red and blood's dripping from his eyes and from his hair and it shimmers on his robes and pools on the floor. It slides down his face in torrents (even though his cheek is _dry_, the voices cackle, _you're red, Ashura, red and soaking wet—_and yes he believes them, because they've never been wrong before_)._

Ashura laughs, choking on the blood falling into his mouth, and his tongue brushes the tip of the stake through his head. Sharp. Salty.

The edges of his vision dim with redblack smoke.

"A – a sleeping spell?" But of course it is. "And one I taught you, at that." Because he taught Yui everything. He blinks the redness out of his eyes and stares at the pale face before him "But this magic is not eternal – you are only delaying the fulfillment of your promise, Fai."

Yui says nothing, only stares with such pain in his eyes that Ashura, for a second, wonders if his voices were truly right at all. Only for a second.

His hair is wet, matted to his forehead, and not because of the blood (there is no blood). He himself is surrendering to the slumber, and he can feel cold, sharp-taloned hands stroking him, saying to _give in, it will be alright, we'll wake you when the time comes_.

"Your kindness will be the death of you one day, Yui."

And he is encased in glass, whispering with his final strength. His advisors sing in his ear, and his eyes close, and everything fades to bla—

.

.

* * *

**This is proof that I haven't died. (Or have I? 8O)**

**I know it's been forever, but we just got our break now and, ya know, pre-break SUBMIT EVERYTHING NAO OR I WILL KEEL YOU, _KEEL YOU_ frenzy. So now we have this. Ashura as a complete delusional psychopath. He has no sense of self anymore. **

**So, yeah. Anyway. Next chapter might be in Fai's POV...if I can pull it off, that is. I'm trying for it. If I can't get him right, it'll be Ashura again. **

**That reminds me. I'm also planning a oneshot about Ashura (yes, I AM Captain Obvious /sliced). In a Mental Prison - er, I mean Hospital. Y/N? (Yes, this is an excuse for me to write more blood.)**

**Sidenote: Umineko pwnz. **


	8. and back to where you started

-[Eight]-

Ashura is asleep.

There are monsters sitting on his eyes, leaden weights that push their feet into his eyelids, making sure he doesn't dare wake. His watchmen. They wiggle their toes in the crevices of his eyelids and press down on the glass of his mind, driving the debris in further. Ashura is asleep.

Ashura is asleep, but he is not; he feels their heavy footsteps all the same. Ashura is awake sitting on the shattered throne of his ransacked mnd's castle, but asleep in a coffin under the crystal lake of his winged palace. _Ashura is not here,_ but Ashura is not _there, _either. Ashura is nowhere.

A corner of his glass ceiling shatters.

Fai is a good spellcaster, yes, which is why he was supposed to kill Ashura in the first place. _Supposed to. _That plan was hidden deep in the holes of his heart, the ones spilling hot red lava onto the snow, along with the thick scarlet clumps of flesh that might have been bits of himself. All the corpses heaped around the countryside, inside the banquet hall, and shoved into the closets of his bedchamber were nothing but useless sacrifices to a god who simply wasn't paying attention. Fai was supposed to kill him so Celes would be safe and preserved and perfect. Fai was supposed to kill him so Yui could live.

But no, no, of course not.

Ashura combs glass from the ceiling out of his hair, letting the faerie dust magic sparkle on his fingertips. He scratches with his other hand at the little teeth digging into his skull. His diadem is discarded, impaled on a sharpened femur.

Now. To review the game plan. He rests his head against the back of the throne and lets the scenes play behind his eyelids in slow motion, watching for the point where someone deviated from the script.

.

.He knew what he was doing when he tattooed the boy's back. He was furthering his developments, keeping a child safe, and making sure that at least ten more families would live – for that was how many he'd have to slaughter to surpass Fai's power if he wouldn't have laid the blue phoenix on him. Not that he'd have minded, but he is (was) a good king and to kill needlessly is sin.

(Ashura hears laughter from far off and he doesn't know why.)

He watches himself retch and cough as his advisors patted his back with cold hands while the physicians who'd tended to him choked themselves with the bile in their throats. Ripping out their intestines had been rather efficient. It's a pity he'd mixed up the anesthetic elixir with a potion for heightening the senses. Otherwise, it was a relatively successful operation. Ashura makes a mental note not to play doctor god anytime soon.

(More laughter. Mocking laughter, echoing inside his own head and _where is it coming from_ who's there _who ARE YOU_-)

He sees Fai go hunting, staff in hand, for the animal stalking Celes' countryside, a monster that left no footprints but a trail of blood nonetheless. He was out hunting the day Ashura hosted the feast of slaughter, for a very simple, selfish reason that the wizardking could not entirely fathom. Ashura did not want Yui's perception of him as benign caretaker to shatter so rudely. In fact, he'd been avoiding Yui lately because he did not want Yui to see him for the murderous beast he was, even if his intentions were as noble and good as they could be.

(The laughter pours itself down his throat, and it chants insults at him _you weak, weak fool what is wrong with you why are you crying, you despicable monster, you don't deserve to cry.)_

His advisors mocked him for his sentimentality, pestering him with visions of Yui's death, bloody death at the hands of a rabid wolf, or that Yui had hung himself, or that Yui had been eaten out from the inside until he was nothing but a husk with empty eyes. He swatted them away as he would a fly _(he lay awake_ all night screaming and sobbing and _no, no, Yui, you can't die, YUI-)_ and banished his weak, simpering pity to the abyss at the centre of his soul.

There were ten million more deaths here and there, not all of them planned. He remembers fearing the scandals that could erupt within his kingdom ("the king is a liar, is a liar, is a liar!") and making sure any witnesses to his murders were sufficiently silenced. He remembers feeling the magic sing like silver ice behind his eyes, strengthening and soaring, but still never close enough to reach Fai's. His mind skips over the screaming and the torture, the stakes drilled through his mind, and the spiders that scratched under his skin, shoving their legs through his mouth.

And finally, the last act, the grand massacre.

Ashura watches himself break.

The castle he's in now plunges itself into silence as the king commanded his court to drown itself in blood. Ashura feels himself smile. It was important that his people enjoy themselves before their least moments – in fact, almost like his feast was fated to come just before he surrendered to the good advice he'd been getting this whole time. Rather like giving them a last treat. He really is a good king, isn't he, Ashura thinks with some complacency, and he settles into the screams ripping through his head.

And then the tape ends. Ashura watches it fade to black.

Huh.

He still doesn't know how anything went wrong. The script was flawless (filled with holes that many fell into), the acting superb (what makes it worse is that he wasn't acting at all), and everyone remembered their lines (but not all got to say their piece before they died). There are no more possible answers except that it was _he _who forgot the words he had to say or stumbled into the wrong scene which is **impossible**_improbableabsurd_**. **

The laughter rises to a high-pitched scream that comes from nothing and fades to nowhere. An imp on his eye crawls over the side of his head (he can feel its hands, burning hot, groping around his cheeks) and into his ear, tearing out a pathway to his brain with its teeth and nestling itself into the gore, whispering _you did nothing wrong, my dear King. The boy will come back. It's inevitable. And then you will be free to roam your country again with him, even for an hour before you die. Maybe Fai will remember the pretty tricks you showed him. _

Yes, maybe he will, Ashura agrees.

The words carve into his head like acid ink dripping from a freshly-sharpened quill. _Such a fool you are, Your Majesty. Now, sleep. _

Sleep. Ashura isn't sure if he can. He listens to the glass dripping from his ceiling and to the laughter clawing at his insides and the words hissing in his head and thinks to himself that he doesn't mind this at all, because Fai will come back and Celes can be preserved and those wide blue eyes will stare him down for the monster he is and Ashura's blood will be spilt on such pure white hands.

The image of his death at the hands of the boy he loves most is warm, impossibly warm.

* * *

**No, I can't write in Fai's P.O.V. I...just...can't. Sorry to disappoint you all...but...**

** .../pokes a mushroom in a corner.**

**Well anyway. **

**Chapter 8 (Insert trumpet fanfare here, along with a chorus of mad laughter and screaming). **

**For those of you who actually bother reading my works, I'm sorry that it took so long. I had it written down in my notebook but kept forgetting to type it up. So...yeah. I'll start planning Chapter 9 now. **


	9. before you start to sing anew

-[Nine]-

Ashura is not bound to his glass throne in his glass castle of his broken-stained-_glass_ mind. They have untied his feet and let him walk along the slippery corridors, barefoot, with black, twisted arms reaching out for his naked white ankles as he strides on. A flick of his toes and he breaks them, watches them crumble and fall into ebony ashes on the ivory floor, powdering the thick red paint that coats the palace.

The castle seems to have expanded since his last exploration. The walls stretch on and on and on, empty white fading into empty grey then empty darkness in the farthest corners. Whispers ride along the drafts from outside, swirling in and out of the still-wet hole in his head, cooling the little imp that resides there with lies and truths and half-truths and stories that may be true but he isn't sure anymore, really. They pool at his feet and flood between his toes.

He drags his feet out of the marsh and walks on.

In the centre of this castle is the ballroom, the Great Hall, where in Celes he singlehandedly massacred more than half of the entire country – or rather, he gave them the inclination to massacre themselves. Ashura wonders what could have happened to the last man standing. Did he kill himself? Gnaw at his own flesh in a perverse attempt at fullness, tearing off his skin and sucking on his own blood? Swallow a spider that had crawled down his throat, leaving scissors-cuts in his lungs and choking on his own blood? Or had he simply lay down and fallen asleep, peacefully, lusts already sated? The wizardking ponders this and doesn't hear the same mocking laughter from yesterday tickle at his ears. He is still pondering (_-maybe he had a family, maybe he killed them first, maybe he had been cheating, did he kill his lover?-)_ when he hears an animal's shriek and sees the bodies at his feet flicker and stir.

Ashura stops.

In front of him are the great double-doors with violet runes etched in, spelling out his country's motto (_The land that rises to its feet before its master is the land that bends to the greater good_). Doors that open to death and lead to the Great Hall, the very scene of the crime, to which the criminal always returns. And behind them there is a thrashing monster crying out for release, rattling the doors with its force of will and anger and it screams and then there's a horrible choking, retching noise and the splatter of spit against the diamond-marble-_glass _before it moans again.

Ashura himself is beast eating off bits of Celes, but he now has reason to believe that the very core of the killer he was is trapped right there. He drips rumours and lies on the floor as he glides into the altar of his sin, to meet the demon that gnashes at the stone with its teeth.

The doors are soundless against the pool of whispers, parting the dead sea.

.o.

And he's there, and the wizardking is there. He's there. He's there and _oh no, not this, anything but this no just no hasn't he been good why is he here and_ Ashura will not, will not, will not face this beast again and not again not again WHY.

White. Pale. Ebony tangles of hair draging on the floor, twisting into the chains digging into its skull and spit dribbling from the mouth in red drops. Scarlet lumps of flesh falling from the gaping eyeholes. It writhes, strains against the chains, tearing out bits of its brain and splattering them on the floor and Ashura doubles over as the reek of corpses hits him and he vomits out his last dinner, mingling with the drool and blood and secrets on the floor. The portrait of his soul, painted by a drunken madman with a broken brush. Or so his voices said, and when have they ever been wrong?

The monster screams, thrashes, lunges forward with its vein-riddled arms, choppy and inconsistent, as if to wring the wizardking's neck and choke him with his own hair. It's breath is the stench of dried blood and rotten carcasses _(the bodies on the floor are torn open and gaping bloody red – "what else was this creature to eat?" _the voices say. _It made do with what it had.)_ and its throat bulges with the pulsing growths inside.

_Horrible_, is Ashura's first thought. The next is, _but isn't he me?_

The glass on the ceiling drops into Ashura's ballroom, painting everything in the rainbow prism of light. Magic taints his every breath and his eyes are dry, held open by the little imp in his head. (He misses the grinning faces propped up on crystal cylinders as he beseeches the voices _why is he here make him go away – _those heads were familiar, taken from corpses of his own family, easier to talk to.) The wizardking watches the beast's neck brust open and eight spider legs pick themselves out of the flesh, dropping red-white bits on the dirty floor.

Voices whisper: _And we've made the picture even better._

Ashura isn't sure if it's him or the beast that screams.

.o.

_Why_, he's still asking. Hasn't he been good? Hasn't he listened to them? They even forgave him for fumbling a bit in his plans – why?

Why did they have to remind him of who he was?

Why did they have to remind him that he _is _a despicable monster, even when he's finally grown into the face he gives the world, even when he isn't a broken hypocrite anymore, even when he has perfectly earned the death he is soon to receive?

Ashura sits upon his glass throne and doesn't notice the ground cracking around it, doesn't hear the chains rusting when he moves his feet.

* * *

**I don't know what to think of this chapter. I'm not proud of it the same way I'm proud of, say, chapter 6. Please tell me if my prose was boring and how you think I could improve 8D**

**In any case, yay, I'm not dead. **


	10. and shatter the sky with song

[-Ten-]

There is something beating its fists under the glass floor, but Ashura doesn't hear it. It pounds the surface, scattering dust and sharp slivers and raining little crystals down on itself, more lies to catch inside its throat.

Everywhere he steps, something shatters, be it the ceiling or the walls or even the very foundation of the castle itself. There's something restraining his movements but he thinks nothing of it; it's only fatigue, only listnessness, only lethargy.

His thoughts crawl away from the ballroom faster than his feet whenever he walks along the hallways, each step spreading cracks along the surface. The imps bundled up in his mind laugh at his cowardice, but he pushes them away and decides not to heed their words. They are not happy with this, unamused with his insolence and insubordination, restless to have something else to kill, and if it must be the core of Ashura's soul, then so be it.

The wizardking is ill-used now to denying his advisors and had forgotten all the nightmares that came with it – and here he is in eternal sleep. His eyes are clouded with the whispers they slip through the cracks in his mind, rolling them between the nerves and tissues so subtly that he almost doesn't notice they're there until he sees Fai standing there with open arms and a dagger hidden in his sleeve. He'd embrace him if only his hands weren't so red all the time.

Red.

He hates red.

And he's scrubbed them with spells, soap, and salt, and even shards of the ice, but no, redredred remains. And he doesn't bleed, because he's checked; under his skin are bones and incantations and the imps clinging to his flesh, but nothing else. He feels them crawling around, dirty feet prodding at his blood vessels and organs and their toes sinking in them, wiggling and smearing red across his skeleton . He cuts open his skin and licks the bones clean and then magicks himself shut again – the only things that sets him apart from common animals are his thumbs, his advisors, and the fact that he hates every minute of it.

Ashura _will not will not will not will not will not_ allow Them the tortuous manipulation of emotions and fears like seamstresses stitching messages in fine silk in red thread. No, everything he brings upon himself will be his own doing and his own fault. He does this to make sure he can still call himself Ashura, not Mindless Puppet of Empty Skin Filled With Shadow Voices And Nothing Else. So he roams the castle with sleepy eyes and bleeding feet and stays far, far away from the ballroom. He will not desecrate his own soul to appease their whims. He will not drive a sword into the very core of himself – no matter how much of a despicable monster that is.

_Pity you already have, Your Majesty_, says the real Fai, the dead one, tottering after him with uncertain steps. The boy grabs his hand and clings to him like a lost child. It isn't the same.

There is something trying to break through the glass beneath his feet, but Ashura doesn't see it. He only sees the blonde hair and sunken eyes of someone more dead than he is.

.o.

Outside his mind, Ashura is alseep, peaceful to anyone else looking in. Tucked next to his is Fai's glass coffin with the child's mournful face staring upwards, towards the surface. Chi is stretched out over the surface, a shimmering entity made up of someone else's memories and wishes, the canopy over the prince's bed.

Chi shivers when someone else's soul touches hers. The contact lasts less than a second, longer than an eternity. The wizardking is struggling. The wizardking is waking up.

But not yet.

No need to worry Master yet.

.o.

Black rain falls in front of his eyes. Black screams and red water mingling on his skin, a torrent of blood and despair and mirrors.

Dream-Fai hops along beside him, skipping over puddles like a little child should, but he never smiles. Not once. The voices tell him to cut a smile into his face but Ashura refuses. He's looked out the window and seen corpses instead of young more than enough.

Yui used to be stoic and blank-faced. Yui used to have stone-cold little hands and nothing but a dead body to keep him going. Yui used to live with memories tailored to fit the exact shape of his mind and Ashura loved him for all his brokenness and determination. And Ashura loved Celes for its beauty and its people. When he'd heard that it was a little girl from a rural village who had gotten Yui to smile, he'd visited their family and gave them provisions to last ten years.

He tried to remember not to kill them. A week later they were buried under the snow and Ashura was cursing himself for his lack of willpower.

The banging on the floor sends shudders down the hallways, sends cracks up the wall, shatters the ceiling. The monster in the ballroom scratches on the door. Corpses fall through the chasms slit open around them. Ashura places his palms over Dream-Real-Fai's eyes and pulls him closer. Even if it's just a corpse, he'd rather Fai not see this. And the Dream-Fai buries himself into his coat and Ashura wishes he could call him _Yui_ without the child disappearing .

And then everything reseals itself and his arms are empty.

Except for a small skull. A child's skull. One that crumbles into dust as he clenches his hand.

Yui has lied, yes, but Ashura has done worse. Ashura withheld the truth with silence and indulgence and smiles. Ashura never told him that no magic could raise the dead. Postpone death, yes, give something the semblance of life, yes, but never restore what has already slipped past them.

He breaths ice and exhales fog. Magic shimmers under his fingertips. He is alive, but he is not. He is asleep, but he isn't. He is waiting. He just wants to die.

.o.

Outside, his fingers twitch. No-one notices.

* * *

**Whooaaa. Fast update, da? **

**Anyway~ damn. CLAMP's timeline is confusing. Stupid. Magical. Theory. =_= /killed.**

**Please review ^_^**


	11. melodies fall from the open chasm

[-Eleven-]

_Die._

It echoes in his mind. The word jars against the current of commands the Voices keep up. Jagged edges clash against each other, filling his head with high-pitched screeching. Ashura bashes his head against the _glass_-stone again and again in an effort to shake both of them into silence. The Voices just scream louder. His mind explodes with the noise and the walls break more due to impact.

The floor quakes. Someone sneaks up behind him and whispers a lullaby sweet enough to make his hands steady and slack. He looks down and wishes he hadn't.

_I want to to die._

His hands are red. He draws in the dust, using the blood of others as a pallette. He swirls his fingers in the mixtures, mixing scarlet with crimson with burgundy into a muddy claret. And he paints, painstakingly filling the glass ground with detail and trying to ignore how the blood sticks in all the wrong places and congeals on his palms and gets under his nails. Occasionally he has to tear a lung or a heart open so that he has enough to finish. He digs his fingers into the pulsing organs and traces patterns that only he understands.

The Voices liken him to a three-year-old playing with pigments and charcoal.

When the ground is covered, he cannot see the cracks splitting the floor into continents or the sparkles caught underneath or his own face, pale and grotesque, horribly dark eye sockets and long lashes and bits of flesh falling and splattering onto the surface, leaving trails on the glass canvas. He cannot see the grinning imps that have taken to pulling bits of his brain out through his ears _("we need more space," _they chant_),_ nor can he see the tear tracks on his face.

_I want to die._

If anyone will kill that beast, it is Yui and no-one else. He thought he and his advisors had agreed on that. Why, then, are they shrieking at him to end its life now, by his own hand, when that – that _monster_ is obviously him and he cannot be the one to end his own life? For one thing, the beauty that is Celes would break down upon itself if it were not Yui's hand that would end him; for another, Yui is the perfect killer.

Ashura stares at the ground and wonders what he'll do first when he wakes up. Break any magical barriers, of course. Maybe he'll watch the snow, just to have something different than this redredredness. He'll wash his hands, scrub them hard enough to see his own white palms under all the blood, and then slit his own skin open for good measure – just to check if they're still there, just to check if he's truly awake and not just dreaming within his dreams.

_I want to die._

Some days he sits and counts how many he killed, how many he could have broken, how many corpses are in the closets and under the ground. He remembers ripping them open and painting smiles on their faces with the redness hiding under their skin. He remembers pouring snow into their mouths while they cried and he remembers feeding them their own entrails. He remembers thinking the red added to the pretty snow and how nice everything looked when he was done. He remembers gouging their eyes out and scattering the little orbs of black and blue and brown and gold around the countryside before returning and having the villagers pick them up, trailing blood on the ground from their sockets and digging in the snow with frozen fingers, bent over. (It hadn't been efficient, but it was fun. Took hours, though.) He remembers one fine lady, quite a handsome woman. He remembers painting her eyes in such lively colours and tearing her hair off because she looked better that way.

He remembers laughing, as if it were sport. His advisors told him to think of it as hunting game, so he did. And what marvelous game he hunted, too.

Ashura wonders, sometimes, why he wants Yui to kill him, why he wants to die. The question didn't seem all that important when he had a sword in hand and a body at his feet, but now he has eternity and a day to think of it. He thinks in circles and doesn't quite come to a solution; all he knows is that the god better be listening this time, because those corpses didn't have to die in vain.

_I_ _want to die._

He wonders if sheer will can make him wake up.

The Voices aren't helping much – there won't be anyone else to kill once his eyes open and he moves. They want him to remain trapped with his reflections and the corpses that crawl into bed with him and try to tear his heart out in his sleep. And so they whisper, whisperwhisper secrets and plans and little lullabies about hanged children and crying mothers. They sound like angels, but he is man and he is stubborn. And since when has man listened to divine orders?

And so he fights. They crack his head open and sing louder, sending their voices into the bloody red tunnel inside him, but he walls his soul in and they shred the inside of his eyes so that he has no choice but to close them. It hurts when the air hits the open wounds and he tracks blood all over the paintings on the floor, bleeding from the back of his eyes. It slips into his throat sometimes and he's bent over and choking and he coughs up bits of flesh, too.

One day he has enough. He takes a head and smashes it onto a cylindrical crystal and watches the spiders crawl around it and weave webs that go inside it. They pull threads out its eyes and nose and break holes in the skin to connect the tapestry together until the whole head is nothing but a mass of grey stitches. He stares at this until the image is burned into him and he sees it when he sleeps and when he is not-awake.

_I want to die._

Ashura waits for the silence. He waits as he stares at the head that isn't there and the flies buzzing in the web and the snow that never falls outside the window. And when the Voices sigh in exasperation at the petulant child fate has put into their hands, he simply smiles and thanks them before he gathers all his magic and walks to the door.

And he says, he says _Open. _And the Voices say, _Open_. And his eyes open.

.o.

Chi breaks. She slices herself open and feels the memory in her soar away. She resonates with her other self and makes sure that Fai knows that the wizardking is awake. And there is no time. No time.

* * *

**MERRY CHRISTMAS, ALL. Here's your update 8DD**

**Was reading Infinity Arc just to make sure of things while writing this. I'm one of the few narcissists who thinks they might, _might _have actually figured out what the hell is going on /arrogant. /killed.**

**Anyway, my love for Ashura-sama grows and grows, yeah. Please review~**


	12. dropping into your empty mind

[-Twelve-]

The ground is cold and he is wet. The sky is broken and hail rattles against the windows. Uninviting. Grey. Ashura stands there in waterlogged robes and shivers, but the ground isn't glass anymore and the ceiling is flawless, pristine, free from cracks or spiderwebs. And the water is clear, untainted by blood. Ashura breathes in and shakes the numbness from his fingers.

He took the child with him, cradled in his left arm. The eyes are far too large for his face and bones peek out, silhouetted against chalk-white skin, but Ashura sees remnants of the beauty Fai once possessed, before death and hunger stripped it from him along with his name.

Ashura sits the child down on the throne and dresses him in his old rags. He combs the water from his own hair and sets his best smile on his face. Another body, clad in the black cloth and golden buckles of another world, barely passes his notice as it rolls down one of the mountains of corpses and comes to rest far from his sight. There are far too many dead here.

And then he waits. He claws his skin open to pass the time and is surprised when there is actually blood that streams out instead of imp-faces and that his bones don't have little footprints on them.

Yui takes too long. Yui always takes too long.

Ashura props his chin up on his right hand, elbow on the throne's armrest, and stares outside the window. He hopes the blizzard will calm down soon. If he hadn't just spent infinity in a restless sleep he'd be inclined to doze, but finding patterns and runes in the rushing snow is a much better pastime.

The throne is crumbling, but the ground is steady. Every movement of his beckons recognition from the castle; he is home, truly. Like a patient mother he waits for the wayward child to return as well.

He passes eons waiting. Time stretches across universes and tries to reach the smiling wizard. Please, come home.

.o.

Something flickers at the edge of his perception. Ashura's head jerks around and sees nothing that wasn't there an hour ago but then it comes back, hovering and disappearing in intangible flashes. He grabs onto it and lets it melt through his mind.

Magic.

Yui's magic.

Ashura's face splits in a beaming smile and he clutches the doll-corpse closer. A fresh coat of paint for the castle is in order. The two hundred corpses that litter the floor are halved and the walls are redder than ever and it's so _warm_. As long as the ground is opaque and he doesn't have to see the chains latched into his skull and the hooks that tear at his arms when he moves wrong, it's alright.

And so Ashura waits, just a bit more, and pretends that he doesn't want to throw up. He combs through the dead and finds _her_, the lifeless princess that's warm only because another young girl broke apart. He throws her into the lake and imagines her corpse buzzing wth flies, blood bubbling at her mouth and her eyes wide open and veins stretched to bursting. It fits her more than this preserved plastic perfection.

Waiting is tiresome. The clock ticks slowly and the snow falls quietly and the whole place is sleepy, with silent lullabies whispering at the door. Ashura barely hears the sounds of running footsteps or registers that those aren't the sounds of Fai's feet and the magic tastes more stale and half-dead the closer it gets.

.o.

Ashura doesn't want to look at him, but he does anyway. Fai seems thinner and the air around him smells like dried blood. And his eye is missing and his hair is longer and his smile looks like poison, not at all like how it did before.

The wizardking swallows bile and beams.

"Welcome home, Fai."

Fai looks away, apprehension and shame and guilt outlining his movements. (His eye seems less blue than before. Ashura frowns.) "I tried as much as possible not to come back."

"Even if you said you'd grant my wish?" Ashura's smile softens and he reaches out to him, ignoring the dark ninja and the serious boy. "I've been waiting for you."

Fai flinches.

Ashura sweeps his arm across the room in a broad gesture. "And this child has also been waiting. For a very long time, Fai."

No magic can revive the dead. Animate it, yes, but not revive it.

The real Fai totters on its feet and levels a damp, scarred finger at the man who was once his brother in another life without time or another dimension without fear or dreams or tears.

* * *

**Holy shit. I'm not dead.**

**Double update to make up for the long wait, tho I know it's not good enough. **

**Ashura doesn't seem that, idk, tormented anymore. It just happened. I guess waking up helped? Idk, when you're left alone with your subconscious and are insane, I figure your dreams are worse off than reality.**

**Thanks for reading~**


	13. littering your barren soul

[-Thirteen-]

It doesn't last that long. It's a very simple thing to piece memories together in the wrong order, or to change some words, or to pretend things never existed. Ashura does notice how the heavily-built ninja seems to look more and more enraged and how the boy breaks down in tears, but it's Fai he watches. Fai, held down by the ninja, looking like something killed him from the inside.

* * *

-_ you weak, weak fool what is wrong with you why are you crying, you despicable monster, you don't deserve to cry-_

* * *

The memories get grainy when Ashura changes something. Yui's mind is under too much stress already and to add to it makes it worse. It's alright, though. Enough torture and Yui will be ready to kill him out of spite.

_I want-_

It's hard for him too. To lie to himself and to Fai just to make sure he can end this now. His vision keeps flickering; he sees the ninja cut open, strangled by his own intestines, the boy writhing, feeding on that man's remains. He sees the princess drowning herself and banging her head on the lake's walls so hard it's unrecognizable a few hours later but she _just doesn't stop. _And something inside his head laughs and laughs and Ashura just wants it to shut up a bit so he can hear Yui breathing.

* * *

_"Your Majesty—!" _

* * *

The tape doesn't end for a while. Ashura drags it out so he can make Yui hate him, but he doesn't think it's working. And while it's playing, the spaces all seem to wide and the water dripping is too loud.

* * *

_"-is that blood?" _

* * *

The tape climaxes right where Yui tucks him in for a millenia-long sleep. It ends with Fai melting himself away from this world. The denoument is abrupt and unsatisfying, because it should have ended with Ashura's corpse rotting underneath the snow. Time to rewrite reality.

"I can't do it."

Ashura starts. Yui's voice is sickly and his cheek is pressed against the floor. He draws a deep breath and repeats, "I can't do it. No matter what you became later, you showed us kindness when you first found us." Another breath. It seems terribly difficult for him to say. "So, I can't, I can't kill you."

Is that it? To negate that kindness with cruelty is all that he needs to do now.

Enough cruelty to last a lifetime.

It doesn't faze him. At all. At all. At. All. (He needs to hammer this point in his head so he doesn't forget that it doesn't faze him.)

_I want I want I want I want I want I want I want I want—_

He sweeps his arm upward, pulling the princess up from the depths of the water. She hovers in midair, trickling wetness onto the crystal floor, unconscious. "Shall I continue?"

There are three separate outburts but he fixates on Yui's. He flicks his wrist and the girl tips to the left like a drunken puppet. "How strange. This body has no soul, yet it lives. Oh!"—and here he lets a staged ephiphany light up his face, but the metal chains remain dull and invisible—"It must be because of that feather, the one you changed into a person's form."

There are hooks that dig into his cheeks, pulling the corners of his lips upward.

"You told me you made her to resemble your mother, isn't that right, _Fai?"_

Blood dribbles down his chin, but nobody else can see it.

_ Long blonde hair, innocent features, warm eyes and a smile that looks so kind but_ so empty.

In the time it takes to blink Yui unleashes a barrage of spears that Ashura blocks easily. The magic tastes like spoiled milk. "I trust this is someone rather important to you."

"A-Ashura-?" How confused he sounds, how lost annd how beautiful.

His own magic crackles at his fingertips and encases the ninja and the boy in separate capsules. Untouchable. He and Yui are dueling now and part of Ashura wonders _why don't I just let him kill me this is stupid this is pointless._

That part of him is silenced by mad laughter. Not like someone such as he deserves an easy death anyway.

The dark tall man is fighting in his bonds of ice and Ashura has a spike pointed at the girl's throat. Yui looks like he's wondering who to save first and he screams their names. And yes, Ashura can sense it, the air itself stands still and those glowing violet runes are everywhere and

* * *

_I am a truly despicable monster, aren't I?_

* * *

"STOP!"

It is an explosion of glory and gramarye, one that encompasses dimensions in strength and fills the room with the swell of Yui's power. But it's only half of what he used to have, and there are a thousand souls singing in Ashura's blood, breathing their strength into him. So he smiles and lets them stop Yui's magic before it reaches him, blasting him across the room. There is a whisper of another spell that isn't Yui's and the entire place is breaking, bursting at the seams and ready to implode.

Oh, it's that ninja again. He rushes towards the wizardking two paces too slow and Ashura waves his hand again. When he closes his eyes he can see the bone snapping and the jagged edges hitting the muscles and the muscles breaking apart and the entire right side crumbling, breaking off, with only tiny pink threads of skin holding it in place. But the damage is not that great; he's only knocked a rib or two out of place, and if he's lucky they'll have pierced a lung and that ninja will be drowning in his own blood soon.

Ashura contemplates this rather calmly. It's a contrast to Yui's anguished cry that doesn't even sound human anymore, maybe because it isn't. And the magic combusts itself and breaks apart the barriers holding it again and Ashura can barely summon enough strength in time to combat it.

There are too many runes swirling in the air and too many surges of power that leave Ashura nauseated because Yui's magic is sour now, easy to fight off. It's been tainted by blood and loss, much like Yui himself is.

_I want I want I want I want I want_—

He barely notices when the girl is taken from him. He only knows that there is a lull, and Yui is walking toward him. He wants to take the boy in his arms and sing to him and show him the snow and all the patterns the snowflakes have, but they have no time.

And Yui speaks and Ashura contemplates slamming his head against the wall just to get the laughing to shut up. But that would be poor form before his guests, so instead he lets the magic reach into him and rip it out. It doesn't stop and there is blood gushing out his ears and into his throat and it feels like there is a drill whittling away the matter in his head.

But his thoughts are clear. Clear. And Yui is talking. Ashura listens, very still.

"I am not kind, Your Majesty. I'm just weak." Yui gestures helplessly. "And this weakness is what brought about this situation in the first place."

Ashura dares not contradict him here, although there are many things he'd like to say.

"So," Yui says, his voice cold and dry. "Let's grant it, Your Majesty. I'll grant your wish. And I'll put an end to mine"

He is still standing there, very still. He can taste the magic in the dust in the air and the blood is wet on the floor. Yui wields the magic in his hands, brings it down upon him, and Ashura blocks it.

Whywhywhywhywhywhywhycan'tIjustletitendIamsotired.

And then he moves, from the space of nothingness into the space of everything and Yui's neck is in his hands.

* * *

-_ and you're left dragging your fingernails through the mangled mass of open bodies, looking for just a little bit of goodness left in you, just a little bit- _

* * *

"Hey, I told you, didn't I? The more I kill, the stronger my magic becomes."

Yui looks scared. Ashura strokes his forehead. (Hush, dear, it'll all be fine.)

"And you've lost your eye. Half of your power's gone, too."

The serious boy's jaw scrapes open, incantations dancing on his tongue. Ashura pins him to the wall with ice. He is of no matter. Back to Yui, now. "You were trying to end both of us, weren't you? But even with both your eyes, you won't be able to beat me."

A smile.

"You always wanted to die. To end that life that took Fai's away." Ashura feels the magic slip into his fingers and he lets it reach into Yui's throat. He hears the sound of something breaking. It's warm, but Yui's blood is even warmer.

"You can't die. You have to bring Fai back to life, don't you remember? You promised." Ashura straightens and looks around. "Yet, you still tried to kill yourself!" He tuts. "Is it for their sakes?"

* * *

_I thought I taught you to obey your elders, Yui._

* * *

The serious boy with weak magic, the ninja who tried to attack him – both look so much better half-crazed, feasting on each other's entrails.

"If so, I will kill them."

Yui's eye swirls around, fixes itself upon him.

"The resulting rage will drive you to kill me."

.

.

* * *

**L****ol long chapter. **

**Okay, I gotta admit something. When I started this series, I didn't like Ashura all that much, nor did I plan it to go beyond a bunch of character-sketchy-drabbles.**

**And now I love Ashura like I dun even know. I think he needs a hug, actually.**

**Wtf is wrong with me.**

**Anyway! Thank you for reading. 8D**


	14. until they melt into the dark horizon

[-Thirteen and a Half-]

._Why aren't I dead yet?_

.

.

.It's horrible. The way he's drawing it out. The way he wants to see Yui move and hear him talk and watch him smile and how he's waiting for the latter before he dies.

He was fighting back. Why was he fighting back? He could be dead by now but he prolonged it and he is so tired why did he do this.

_I want I want I want –_

Ashura's grip on Yui's neck is soft, almost tender. His other hand is poised in the air, drawing runes from nothingness. The ninja has broken free again, such an impetuous child, and Ashura sends an army of rocks and spikes and stalactites at him. No luck with trying to restrain the man, his eyes are red in fury and magic glows upon his brow.

"A protective seal-?"

There is darkness, and silver that cuts through it, and elation.

_To die._


	15. taking you with them evermore

[-Fourteen-]

The laughter in his head runs along the edge of the knife as it stabs into him, dripping out his ears and splattering the ground. And then there is a silence that slips between the silver blade and the silver castle and the shadows that flicker across the ground. He is impaled across that man's sword and the ninja's eyes are lit with something unholy and refreshing.

"I see. It protected you." Ashura's words are lilting and calm. He runs his finger on the edge of the katana. "Remove your sword."

The man just stares at him. Ashura feels impatience rise at the back of his throat. "_Remove it."_

He does, in a fluid motion. Ashura's grip on Yui's throat slips and Yui falls back. He looks young. Too young. Like a boy who's just woken from a nightmare and tries to climb in his mother's bed.

In the end, Yui is still drenched in his blood, just not the way Ashura pictured or wanted it.

Ashura bends with some difficulty and lays a hand on Yui's shoulder. He's shaking and tears are driving clean paths through the blood on his face.

"There's no need to cry for one such as myself," Ashura offers, and even he can hear his voice breaking under the strain. His breathing is slow and stagnant, and his blood refuses to travel upwards. This hurts less than it should.

"I wanted you to kill me to lift your curse, Yui, but I'm sure with those two—" here he coughs, his breath in the air like a cloud "—you can beat it yourself." This hurts more than it should.

And Yui looks at him, just looks at him.

He is beyond redemption, having nursed a demon within him until he couldn't tell apart when it is he, benign wizardking, or the black monster speaking. The monster's thoughts twined like thorns over his own mind, drawing excess blood.

His eyes hurt. His fingers prickle and go numb and his arm prickles and goes numb and everything stops.

.o.

Celes groans in protest; he can hear the screaming from within the land itself. The dimension tilts on its axis and the inner core collapses upon itself. There's time, but not much.

.o.

.

.It's not half as warm as he expected it to be.

Ashura knows that the dead can never rise, only remain suspended here before drifting off to the Black Void. It's possible his greatest sin was making sure that Yui need not know that the only place Fai still lives is Yui's own battered mind.

It's possible his greatest sin was ignoring the country's dead when considering his greatest sin.

.o.

The laughing hasn't stopped.

* * *

**the end.**

**it's been fun, everyone. cheers to my first completed multichapter. :'D thanks for reading! **


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